Very Effective Alternate Picking Exercises

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In this video guitar lesson I will show you a nice little etude that you can play that will drastically improve your ability to cross strings while alternate picking.

This video should be watched by every level of guitar player because even if you are new to this technique, you can still play through it very slowly to develop proper alternate picking technique.

The ability to cross strings fluently is by far the most difficult aspect of alternate picking. In this video lesson I demonstrate the only two ways it is possible to move from one string to another while alternate picking, and how to practice them.

These are exercises used by players such as John Pertrucci, Paul Gilbert, Steve Vai, Steve Morse, Eric Johnson, Alexi Laiho and others to develop their phenomenal picking technique.

At the end of the lesson we will put both techniques together for a nice well rounded picking workout.

Download the TAB PDF below because you will definitely need it to follow along with the lesson.

Take your time and keep your picking hand wrist and forearm relaxed while practicing these exercises. It would be great to go through them at least once a day to really keep your alternate picking chops in shape!

Have Fun!!

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14 Comments

fretfanatixon August 23, 2010 at 9:36 pm

Pure gold yet again Mr Carl this is exactly the sort of stuff im trying to do while im still having physiotherapy on my hands and cant really play a great deal,im just working on technique and some theory.
This little ditty sounds good too 🙂

Carl…First off; Thank You for putting up a contrasting background color on Your Wonderful website…without the contrasting color; I had to right click & “select all”, with my face 18″ from my 36″ monitor, to read each sentence…(blind as a bat!…lol) I’ve been away (but kept up subscription payments)… Well; I’m back to stay…You make this stuff so easy for me to actually understand & perform each lesson…thanks again…jf
rYour Comments

I would like to say that i love the site and would like to make one recommendation… would you consider making these videos available for download so i can put it on my phone/ ipod and if i need to rewatch it i’m able to do so.